ELECTION 2012

Electors doubt Obama's eligibility

Not 'satisfied' with White House evidence

Some of the electors assigned by their states to cast the official votes for president of the United States are expressing doubts about Barack Obama’s eligibility.

Capitol Media Services reported that three of Arizona’s 11 Republican Electoral College electors who cast their ballots for Mitt Romney expressed concern that Obama didn’t meet the Constitution’s “natural born citizen” requirement.

“I’m not satisfied with what I’ve seen,” Tom Morrissey, chairman of the Arizona GOP said. “I think for somebody in the president’s position to not have produced a document looks more legitimate, I have a problem with that.”

The actual vote for president is not the popular vote that was held Nov. 6, but the Electoral College vote in state capitals. States are given one Electoral College vote for each member of Congress, and they vote, depending on varying state laws, for the candidates their state residents choose by popular vote.

The doubt about Obama’s eligibility arose before his first election. His father never was a U.S. citizen, and many contend that alone makes him ineligible. At the time of the nation’s founding, a “natural born citizen” likely was considered to be the offspring of two U.S. citizens.

The Founders didn’t want someone leading the U.S. who would have loyalties to a foreign country.

The report by Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services said John Rhodes, another GOP elector, also was concerned about Obama’s eligibility. In addition, elector Don Ascoli said the number of people who voted for Obama is irrelevant to finding out the truth.

Because of numerous legal challenges to Obama’s eligibility, many of which are continuing, the Obama campaign released a computer-generated copy of a short-form birth document from Hawaii.

Then, as president, he released a computer-generated copy of a long-form document from the same state.

However, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his team of Cold Case Posse investigators have concluded that the document is a fake, having been assembled on a computer.

The document:

Arpaio’s team says there is probable cause to believe there was forgery in the creation of the document and fraud in its presentation as a real government document.

“The majority of the people had no dream that Bill Clinton did what he did until a young lady had a blue dress and proved he did,” Ascoli told Fischer. “And he had to come out and apologize to the world, because he lied to you and me.”

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who previously vetoed legislation that would have required documentation of a candidate’s eligibility, immediately made clear she’s not part of the camp seeking documentation of Obama’s eligibility.

“The bottom line is everybody’s entitled to their own opinion,” she told Fischer. “I happen to disagree.”

The state long has been a source of tension for those who defend Obama’s decision not to release documentation that could verify his eligibility. In May, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett asked Hawaii officials to verify the authenticity of the birth documentation.

Bennett said he was responding to charges that Obama’s name should not be on the Arizona ballot.

Without releasing any additional evidence, however, he later said he was satisfied that Obama was qualified and closed the matter.

Ascoli suggested that the federal courts need to determine the truth, or Congress should investigate.